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Sunday, March 08, 2009

In a previous post, I quoted R. Nachum Rabinovitch as disagreeing with R. Moshe Soloveichik's inference from the Rambam that the mitzvah to completely destroy Amalek applies to any nation that acts like Amalek (link). I have since seen that R. Eliezer Melamed (Revivim: Am, Eretz, Tzava, p. 82) also explicitly rejects R. Soloveichik's approach. However, he adds that we should still learn from the idea behind it:

Even though the law is not like him [R. Soloveichik], and the rules of Amalek do not apply to enemies in every generation, we still learn from this that there is a moral responsibility placed on the Jewish people to unconditionally win against its enemies.